FROM A BALCONY, I watch a squadron of ripWings rise from the Palatine landing pads up into the night. Their engines plume blue and shrink in the distance, leaving the Citadel wall behind and crossing the trees toward Hyperion.
The children are safe. And so is Ephraim. My own relief in knowing the bastard lives comes as a surprise to me. I’ve never been the forgiving type, but I feel pity for the man and his pain. I recognized the fear in him when he saw the Obsidian the Sovereign’s men captured. He’s a man. Like my father, like my brothers, raised in a place without love, trampled by the same clumsy Republic that brought us from the mines. I can’t hate him any more than I can hate myself. Maybe that isn’t forgiveness, but it’s all I have to give.
Just because he has pain doesn’t mean he should bring others into it.
That’s on him.
Holiday stands motionless beside me, watching the ships, a wistful expression caged by the hard lines of her face. The Sovereign held her back from the mission. Says it was because she hasn’t slept in forty-eight hours, but even I know it’s because of Holiday’s connection to Ephraim. There’s no forgiveness in the hard woman. I wonder if she was always this intense.
“What odds did you give him?” I ask.
At first I think she doesn’t hear me and might be listening to the pilots and commandos on her internal com, then I realize she’s just ignoring me.
“I don’t gamble,” she says after a moment.
“Course you don’t.”
“Ephraim won’t die,” she says.
“He blessed or something? Touched by the Vale?”
“No. Not blessed,” she says distantly. “He used to work for the Sons, you know. Joined after my brother died.” Her voice is slow and robotic. “Served as a recruiter before becoming a scar hunter. Back before House Lune fell, before the Battle of Ilium even. When the Society’s agents owned this moon, he brought in people like you. Like me. He taught them how to fight. How to survive so they could take back just some of what’d been taken from ’em. After Luna fell to the Rising, he was given a mission in Endymion to find a Gold who was organizing raids. It was a trap. They interrogated his men in front of him. Skinned them alive and made him watch. By the time we got there, he was the only one left. The Gold was captured with the peeling knife in hand.” She pauses, disliking the memory. “But…the Gold had information the Sovereign needed, information he exchanged for a full pardon. Ephraim watched the man who skinned his friends walk free.” She looks at me. “Point is, Ephraim wants to die, but he can’t. That’s his curse.”
“That’s why you took the Obsidian,” I say. “Because he couldn’t watch another friend die?”
She shrugs. “I know where to hurt.”
There’s no regret in her eyes. She seems a person made all of flint and iron, one who came into the world full-born, without mother or father or past or future. Less a woman than shovel or an axe. If there is more than that to her, she would never show it to me. “What sort of person does that make you?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer immediately.
She points east to the New Forum on the far side of the Citadel grounds. The domed building is pale in the night and rises out of the trees around it like a hill of snow, stark in contrast with the brutal lines of the pyramid forum the Society used. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” I nod. She stares on at it. “You think clean hands built it?”
The Sovereign is in conference with Theodora and Daxo when we join them. I keep my distance from both Pink and Gold, my arm still itching from the torture. Above the table, a map shows the progress of the squadron toward the stolen shuttle. The Sovereign watches it coolly as she converses with Theodora, but I can sense the underlying tension in her. Her eyes are bloodshot and heavy bags have formed under them. Coffee cups and the remnants of a meal litter the table. How long can a Gold go without sleep?
“…could not have done this alone,” Daxo is saying to Theodora. He cuts short when he sees me enter the room with Holiday.
“Continue,” the Sovereign says.
Daxo hesitates for a moment with me in the room. “The Syndicate is working with someone. I recommend we conceal this from the Senate until we know more. My spies will have names by the morning. Heads by the end of the week.”
“Theodora?” the Sovereign asks.
“You know my thoughts,” she says. “The longer we hold this from the Senate, the more it discredits the transparency you promised them. Senator Caraval is already inquiring about the unusual traffic over Hyperion.”
“It’s stupid to go before them until my son is safe here, by my side,” the Sovereign says. “I won’t have those men saying a mother can’t govern when her child is in danger. They’ll smear me and call a referendum to make me step down before the vote. With Caraval and the Coppers lost, we’re going to lose six to seven. My veto is all that can stop this absurd peace process.”
“Who would replace you?” Theodora asks.
“The Senate would vote. Majority rules until next election,” Daxo answers.
“Until we know who did it, there will be suspicion that this is a ploy to delay the vote…” Theodora says.
“I already know who did it,” the Sovereign replies. Theodora and Daxo exchange confused glances. “The Syndicate was hired. But by whom? Who has the most to gain?” She waits for an answer. None comes. “It was the Ash Lord. He can’t beat our legions, so he’s after our Senate. Darrow was right. This happened because I was weak, because I was tired. I never should have let the Vox chase him away.”
She focuses back on the holo of her son’s ship making its way back to Hyperion, her long fingers tapping her side.
“Lyria,” she says, eyes boring into me. I don’t bow my head this time, but stare back at her, knowing this is when the axe falls. Yet her tone surprises me. “You made a dire mistake, girl. One that should end your service to me, to anyone. But without you, we would not have found this Volga and…” She spares a glance to Holiday. “…Ephraim. Soon my boy will be back with me, because you were brave enough to own your mistakes. I must now own mine.” How could she ever understand what her mistakes cost me? She’s lost her son for a few days and she thinks she knows. She’ll never know the mud. The flies.
“You lost your family,” she says. “You trusted the Republic and we broke that trust.” Then I’m struck dumb. She goes to a knee. Her eyes on the ground. “I do not deserve it, nor must you give it, but I ask, all the same: Will you forgive us? Will you forgive me for not doing better?”
Forgive her?
I don’t understand the idea. Nor do her councilors. They gawp down at her, as off-footed as I am. Her golden braids are even with my eyes. There’s loose strands. The faint, earthy smell of oil and the coffee from her breath. I hear the air enter her mouth and fill her lungs and whistle out her nose, see her shoulders rise and fall. The power is shed, her naked soul there in front of me. She’s just a woman. Just a mother with more children than any other. Maybe she does know my pain. Before this, she was a freedom fighter. A soldier. It’s easy to forget that. She’s seen mud, and now I think she remembers it.
I can’t hold on to the anger or the pettiness or the pain. I want only to help her, to protect families like mine. Letting go of that anger doesn’t spit on the memories of Ava or Tiran or the children. It honors them. And for the first time I can remember, I feel hope.
With a trembling hand, I reach and touch her head.
She stands afterwards. “Thank you.” I nod, unable to put what’s inside me into words that don’t sound stupid. “A storm is coming to the Republic,” she says softly. “This was just the first breath. You still have a part to play in all of this.”
“What could I ever hope to do?” I ask.
“You have a voice, don’t you? When I go before the Senate, I will need you as a witness. Your testimony will save lives. It will bring the men behind this to justice. Will you help me, Lyria of Lagalos?”
“If you promise me that Liam will be looked after, and his eyesight given to him. I know there’s a way. But I don’t have the money.”
She looks down in amusement. “Are you negotiating with me?”
“I won’t help you if you don’t help him.”
“Very well. It’s agreed.”
I spit in my hand and stick it out to her. She looks down at it in surprise, then shakes my hand.
I’m guided by Holiday to the door. There, I turn back around. “I wonder…could I see Kavax?”
“No,” the Sovereign says. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea right now.”
I nod and follow Holiday out of the room.
At the doorway to my room, I stop. “Could you tell Liam I’m all right?” I ask her. “He must have been worried.”
“He was told you were on an errand for Kavax,” she says. “He wasn’t worried.”
“All the same. Could I see him? I won’t say a thing to him.”
“I’m sorry, it was risk enough bringing you to speak with Ephraim. We can’t have any more security risks.” She watches my face fall without sympathy. Then a sigh escapes her thin lips. “What if I take him candy or a little cake or something and say it’s from you? Would that cheer you up?”
“You’d do that?”
She shrugs. “What’s his favorite flavor?”
“Chocolate.”
“All right.” I wait expectantly, looking up at her. “What? You want a hug? Get inside.” She shoves her fingers against the opening mechanism. The door slides into the wall.
“Oh,” I say, and step in. “Thank you for the—” The door shuts in my face. “Fucking Grays,” I mutter. The room is not grand, but it’s clean and has a full water bathroom. Exhausted, I turn on the water to the shower till steam rises. I wriggle out of my borrowed clothes, awkward with the shoulder sling, and stand under the stream of hot water thinking of how lucky I am to be alive. To not be on the run.
You’d be proud of me, Ava. Ma. I know that. And there’s more I can do. Help the Sovereign till this is through, and maybe we can bring all those bastards down. But it wasn’t the Syndicate who killed my family. Whatever happens here, those Red Hand butchers will go unpunished. How can that be fair? How can it be right?
I turn off the shower and stand near the exit vents so the hot air can evaporate the water from my stomach and breasts. When I open my eyes, I see a pair of white maid shoes on the wet white tile. My eyes track upward. The woman is a Brown in her mid-thirties with two great moles, a hooked nose, and a bird nest of hair. She holds a gun in her hand. At the end of it is a large hypodermic needle that she pulls out of my chest. I take a step toward her and lose my footing. I don’t even feel the ground come up to greet me. The world fogs and spins. And the last I see is the woman patting my face.
“Hello, traitor. House Barca sends their regards.”